3 ms·

Hollow points are designed to stay in the person you're shooting and stop the threat without over penetrating and hitting an innocent person behind the target.

Hollow points are designed to stay in the person you're shooting and stop the threat without over penetrating and hitting an innocent person behind the target. I understand they sound scary to people not familiar with guns but they are the safest option for everyone else around the person you are shooting. Not using hollow points for defensive/police purposes would be insane.

tzs 9y ago
I know nothing about bullets other than what one might deduce from elementary Newtonian physics, so this may be a stupid question. To make a bullet not over penetrate you have to make it so all of its energy is spent in the target (or at least so much is spent in the target that if it does go all the way through it does not have enough left to cause serious injury to whatever it hits on the other side). Hollow points do this by expanding in the target, so that they transfer energy much better than does a regular bullet that enters the target with the same energy. Would it not be possible instead do design a gun and bullet system that shoots regular bullets, but at lower energy, so they don't need to be as effective at energy transfer as a hollow point in order to stop in the target? Lower energy would mean either lower velocity, or lower mass, or both. Lower velocity means shorter range. So does lower mass [1]. Thus, lower energy bullets would have reduced range, but I would expect that would be acceptable in almost all police situations. One drawback I see for lower energy bullets is that bullet resistant material would be more effective, and so in places where criminal wear such things they may need high energy bullets to allow for that (and so need solutions like hollow point to keep them from over penetrating when they use them on someone who is not wearing such material). [1] because of air resistance. Think of trying to throw a ping pong ball and a steel ball bearing of the same size, at the same velocity...the ball bearing will go much farther.
- grzm 9y ago
  The energy transfer into the target is roughly its "stopping power". The goal is to remove an imminent or active threat. Your newtonian physics intuition is correct: lower velocity and/or lower mass is going to lower the energy of the round. If the goal is to stop the individual, you want to be able to deliver as much energy as possible into the target. Lower velocity/lower mass rounds aren't going to be as effective in stopping the target. If a bullet passes through an individual, it hasn't delivered all of its energy to the individual. It's still going, so this is inefficient and dangerous: you're less likely to have stopped the target, and you're more likely to hit something unintended.

tzs 9y ago

I know nothing about bullets other than what one might deduce from elementary Newtonian physics, so this may be a stupid question. To make a bullet not over penetrate you have to make it so all of its energy is spent in the target (or at least so much is spent in the target that if it does go all the way through it does not have enough left to cause serious injury to whatever it hits on the other side). Hollow points do this by expanding in the target, so that they transfer energy much better than does a regular bullet that enters the target with the same energy. Would it not be possible instead do design a gun and bullet system that shoots regular bullets, but at lower energy, so they don't need to be as effective at energy transfer as a hollow point in order to stop in the target? Lower energy would mean either lower velocity, or lower mass, or both. Lower velocity means shorter range. So does lower mass [1]. Thus, lower energy bullets would have reduced range, but I would expect that would be acceptable in almost all police situations. One drawback I see for lower energy bullets is that bullet resistant material would be more effective, and so in places where criminal wear such things they may need high energy bullets to allow for that (and so need solutions like hollow point to keep them from over penetrating when they use them on someone who is not wearing such material). [1] because of air resistance. Think of trying to throw a ping pong ball and a steel ball bearing of the same size, at the same velocity...the ball bearing will go much farther.

grzm 9y ago
The energy transfer into the target is roughly its "stopping power". The goal is to remove an imminent or active threat. Your newtonian physics intuition is correct: lower velocity and/or lower mass is going to lower the energy of the round. If the goal is to stop the individual, you want to be able to deliver as much energy as possible into the target. Lower velocity/lower mass rounds aren't going to be as effective in stopping the target. If a bullet passes through an individual, it hasn't delivered all of its energy to the individual. It's still going, so this is inefficient and dangerous: you're less likely to have stopped the target, and you're more likely to hit something unintended.